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Monday, 27 July 2015

The Poverty of America’s Two-Party System

Introduction

There is an underlying assumption that the more political parties a country
has the more democracy it has, and that the more democracy it has the more
social justice and egalitarianism it enjoys. If this were indeed the case, then
a number of countries around the world with many political parties, including
Italy and Greece, Israel and India, Philippines and Romania, to name a few, must
be Paradise on earth. There is no correlation between a multiparty system and
greater “democracy” any more than there is a correlation between greater social
justice and bourgeois democracy. This is a 19th century north-Western
European concept when the urban middle class and capitalists were mainly
Liberal while the aristocracy and rural classes were conservative, thus the
two-party system reflected a socioeconomic and cultural divide where religion
played a role in the rural areas and education in the urban ones.

A product of the European Enlightenment, the US followed the European
political trends of creating bourgeois political parties representing capital.
When the working class movement became a force in society owing to the changing
division of labor under industrial capitalism, new ideologies emerged from
Socialism to Anarchism and varieties of others on the left as well as extreme
right wing ones, including Fascism that has its origins in the late 19th
century. The evolution of bourgeois society gave birth to social groups that
did not find expression in the traditional political parties and wanted to have
their own voice at a time that minorities, women and workers were not
represented. Despite pressure from the grassroots for representation, in the US
the mainstream political parties always managed to co-opt third party movements
protesting a particular facet of society.

Whether a country developed a two-party system or a multi-party system, popular
rule expressing individual rights remained a core value of bourgeois democracy,
rather than government taking into account collective interests. Under the
political umbrella of any democratic system that has ever existed, capitalism
has been at its core and this means a social order based on hierarchy of
capital. During the 20th century, democracy became synonymous with
capitalism not just in the US but in most countries around the world. One
reason for the success of political parties claiming their allegiance to
“democracy” is their embracing of a pluralistic value system under an open
society where the consumer is synonymous with the citizen. The US has led the
way in the effort to identify democracy with capitalism and the citizen with
the consumer.

The phenomenal success of the two-party system rests in convincing the
majority of the people that this is “the democratic process”, rather than
representative of capitalist class interest factions. This has been achieved in
the name of “nationalism” and “national interest” rhetoric, as the two-party
system identifies itself with the nation-state and national interest that it
equates with the market economy. At the same time, the two-party system
projects the image that a political party representing the working class is
outside the constitutional and societal purview of the “national interest”,
therefore, it lacks legitimacy. This was as true before the Bolshevik
Revolution as it was after when the bourgeois political parties in the US as
well as throughout the Western World stigmatized working class political
parties as representing labor unions, as though labor unions were an anathema
to society and only pro-capitalist political parties enjoyed legitimacy.

The issue of legitimacy in the eyes of the public is of the utmost
importance for a political party to succeed as much as is the need for the
state claiming to be pluralistic to tolerate all voices to be heard. In the
case of the US, this has not been the case throughout its history. Therefore,
it is not surprising that a working class political party never developed. The
government persecuted grassroots organizing of labor unions and political
activists representing the working class, while the corporate media followed
the government in doing its best to stigmatize any working class movement.

Having no political party to express their interests, the working class in
the US and in many countries around the world turned to the two political
parties representing capital. Labeling a political party “Labor” or “Socialist”
as many have done in Europe and around the world is of course meaningless
because their policies are anti-labor and anti-socialist as much as the
policies of the US Democratic Party are hardly “democratic”. The median worth
of a US congressman is $1 million and the total cost for the congressional
races amounted to $3.7 billion in 2012, campaign contributions mostly from
millionaires. Given the profile of the average US representative in Congress,
and considering that a congressman has no chance of making a career unless s/he
promotes capital through legislation to the detriment of middle class and
workers’ interests how can such a representative claim to be anything other than
an agent for capitalists?

Synoptic View of Third-Party Movements in America

Both George Washington and John
Adams dreaded the idea of a two-party system, arguing that it was tantamount to
a form of despotism for two factions to alternate power. John Adams wrote: There is nothing which I dread so much as a
division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its
leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble
apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our
Constitution. Is the two-party system the reason that the vast majority of
the people never realize the mythical American Dream because the two parties
represent the capitalist class, or does the problem rest elsewhere?

Unlike Europe, the US does not have a history of multi-party system
primarily because the media and mainstream institutions limit their focus on
the two major parties. However, even in Europe, there is a two-party system
that essentially entails alternating in government. This is as true of Great
Britain as of France and Germany, but also of most countries, including
southern Europe, although all of these countries have more than two parties. The
common factor between the US two-party system and the Europe is that on both
sides of the Atlantic the ruling political parties represent the same
socioeconomic elites that make sure there is policy continuity. In short, the
political elites alternating power make certain that the interests of the privileged
socioeconomic elites are not compromised by a third political force
representing the working class.

Within the varied interests of the capitalist class in the last two centuries
there have been political parties that tried to break the monopoly of the
dominant two-party system. In 1848, the Free Soil Party, the first major third
party won 5% of the vote. The Republican Party quickly absorbed it because Abraham
Lincoln after all became the champion of the anti-slave movement and the Civil
War obviated the need for the Free Soil Party. In 1892, the Populist Party, which derived much of
inspiration from Jeffersonian democracy, finally merged with the Democrat Party
at the turn of the century. This was during the Gilded Age when the very rich
were enjoying institutional hegemony and it was clear that both Republican and
Democrat parties represented the wealthy to the neglect of the rest of citizens
at a time that the depression of the 1890s caused immense hardship across
America.

The most significant leftist leader in US history was Eugene Debs (1855 –1926) who started out as a union organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and was a Democrat member in his early political caeer in Indiana. A Socialist who had studied the works of Marx among other European Socialists, Debs founded the American Railway Union after the well-known Pullman strike in 1894. To break the strike and prevent future labor-management trouble, President Grover Cleveland used the army and sent Debs to prison. From 1900 until 1920, Debs ran for president, despite harrassment from the state and especially President Wilson who had him convicted in 1918 and sentenced for 10 years under the Espionage Act used to crack down on leftist trade unionists and political activists. Opposing the First World War as one of imperialism backed by capital, Debs noted:

The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had
all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing
to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.To
turn your back on the corrupt Republican Party and the corrupt
Democratic Party—the gold-dust lackeys of the ruling class—counts for
something. It counts still more...to join a minority party that has an
ideal, that stands for a principle, and fights for a cause.

Debs posed a greater threat for mobilizing workers into a leftist political movement than he did as a presidential candidate. However, the mainstream institutions and especially the press saw him as a threat that must be eliminated from the scene.

Throughout the 20th century, from the Progressive Era when the
lower middle class demanded representation to the early 21st century
when the Green movement became popular, all third-party political movements
have been co-opted by one of the two dominant parties that have faithfully
represented the institutional structure. Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to
co-opt the leftists and de-radicalize the general population while securing
Democrat Party dominance from 1932 until 1952. The same pattern of co-optation
that has been true of left-wing movements Absorbed by the Democrat party also
holds true of right-wing parties that the Republic Party absorbs. In 1948,
Strom Thurmond’s State’s Rights Party
constituency became part of the Republican Party, as did George Wallace’s American IndependentParty in 1968, although there were
Democrat voters in both of those as there were in John Anderson’s Independent
Party in 1980 and even in Ross Perot’s Reform party that was eventually
absorbed by Republicans.

In every election, there are many candidates for president, from serious to
the absurd. The media, however, ignores all political parties, unless it is one
that poses no threat to the status quo, such as the Libertarian or Green Party.
By contrast, the Communist Party has usually run a candidate for national office, but no television,
radio or print media would cover its issue. This does not mean that the
Communist Party has always been serious about presenting a platform and
candidates that would at least carry some political weight. However, about the
only way the Communist Party could possibly receive media attention, even
heavily biased one would be if it ran the Pope as a candidate.

Are Americans Hoping for a Messiah Politician? Donald
Trump as a Self-Proclaimed Messiah

America has always romanticized what it calls its
unique brand of “democracy” and the hero-politician that comes along to unify
the country. Although there are the revered presidents that include Washington,
Jefferson and Lincoln, for the most part politics in America has always been
fragmented and not just in the post-Cold War era as some have suggested. Using
foreign policy and foreign enemies to rally public support behind the flag has
its limitations in time of relative peace. For this reason, politicians focus
on targeted enemies within the country. The Republicans in the 1850s focused on
slave-owners, while two decades later the enemy was the labor organizer. The
Democrats in the 1930s focused on strengthening the central government to
preserve capitalism while creating a social safety net to prevent revolution,
while a decade later they focused on combating Communism at home by bringing
dissidents before Congressional committees that blacklisted people who refused
to accept bourgeois consensus politics.

The hero-politician in American history was not
necessarily a president, governor or senator who was committed to social
justice, but one who managed to transcend the individual interest groups and
forge popular consensus so that the political economy could continue to thrive.
Toward this goal of building consensus in a society that is politically
fragmented largely because a substantial segment of voters remains apathetic,
the strategy that has worked is populism (popular cause or causes among a
segment of the voters), especially on the part of the Republicans from the Barry
Goldwater candidacy in the 1960s until the Tea Party faction of the Republican
Party today. Populism works not just in the US but in all countries, because it
projects an image of “reform” in the interest of the people, but in essence its
goal is to secure the election and continue to serve capital as faithfully as
ever. Billionaire Donald Trump is such a person today who has chosen xenophobia
as the focus of his campaign to excite the Republican Party base.

Trump attracts attention for several reasons. First,
he is a billionaire and a celebrity, something the mainstream media focuses on
whether one is running for office or not because the purpose is to promote
capitalism and its values. Second, Trump combined the traditional Rockefeller
Republican because he is a New York billionaire with the appeal of a right-wing
populist focused on xenophobia. Historically, the xenophobia issue has roots
that date back to the 19th century and it also plays well not only
with the racist crowd, but also the middle class that is looking for someone to
blame given that the economy has recovered but living standards continue to
decline amid a growing socioeconomic gap.

In a recent essay I wrote that people not just in the
US but around the world are looking for a Messiah politician and the one that
presents himself or herself closer to the image will secure votes. On the
Democrat side, Hillary Clinton is simply not capable of presenting herself and
does not even try to do so as a Messiah politician, whereas Trump does and
actually appeals to a segment of the social conservatives who do not like
“Washington insiders” and they do not like the other Republican candidates
because they are not giving the right wing someone to blame for all the
problems society suffers. Although it is highly unlikely he will ever be
elected president, Trump has chosen the right wing populist issue xenophobia as
catalytic for his presidential bid in 2016.

Xenophobia is a very clear issue that the average
conservative voter understands as much in the US as in Europe where racism also
runs very high among conservatives. Xenophobia serves as a cover for political,
economic and social problems society faces, but which are difficult to solve
under the existing system without harming the interests of capital. Running
against Washington insiders as a protest candidate from the right, Trump is
appealing to many Republicans especially since he is a billionaire who embraces
the values of Wall Street. The idea that Trump is a deviation from the
mainstream of the Republic Party is utterly absurd, because this is not the
party of Eisenhower, but of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

In an interview, Trump vowed to “get the bad ones out,” meaning the bad illegal immigrants estimated
at 11 million.“I’m gonna get
rid of the bad ones fast, and I’m gonna send them back. We’re not going to be
putting them in prisons here and pay for them for the next 40 years.” Asked about the illegal aliens who are “not bad”,
Trump replied:“We’re going to see what we’re going to see. It’s a very hard thing
from a moral standpoint, from a physical standpoint, you don’t get them out. …Some
are going to have to go and some – Hey, we’re just going to see what happens.
It’s a very, very big subject and a very complicated subject….The wall’s going
to be built. We’re going to have a great border.”

This simplistic racist perspective, if not completely
unrealistic and impractical approach to a very complex subject with economic
and social ramifications is rather typical of how a right-wing populist proposes
to solve what his political party perceives as a problem that must be solved so
that all of America’s problems simply melt away and every citizen can finally
enjoy the fruits of the American Dream. Although there are those who argue
Trump is doing damage to the party, in fact he is energizing the racist,
xenophobic, warmongering base that is motivated by fear that there is an enemy
out there – the Mexican, the Muslim, the outside world that has intruded into
the American way of life and threatening it. It is not the neoliberal policies
and the corporate welfare system that is responsible for the decline of the
middle class, but the “outsiders” and those intruding in US soil.If only they did not exist, America would
have no problems. The GOP cannot discredit Trump because he is the mirror of
his party, as the preliminary polls indicate nationally as well as in several
states.

If a third party is created what 5 main issues should it address?

If a third party is created, it cannot be a single-issue party, like that
of H. Ross Perot who focused on the debt and built all other issues around that
theme. A political party must have a popular base, and in my view the growing
lower middle class and workers constitute the largest popular base. They are
not represented by either political party, no matter the rhetoric from any
candidate. Bernie Sanders is closest to this profile, but even his platform is
not much different than that of the Republican Party in 1956.

If there were five top issues on which a new political party could form its
platform, my list would include the following. Not that the issues I have
listed have even the remotest possibility that a third political party would
adopt them, but they are at the core of challenges that America faces in the 21st
century.

1

Social Justice

This is almost an alien concept in the political dialogue of American
politicians from both parties. The rights and general welfare of all people,
not just one small social class that finances political campaigns in return for
legislation that keeps this social class privileged while the remainder of the
population suffers, is an anathema in political discourse. In fact, not even
mainstream academics raise this issue publicly, because they know it does not
pay to offend the establishment. What is social justice? Is it a utopian
fantasy that advocates equality not just of opportunity, but at all levels as
judged by outcomes in the social, political, economic and cultural domains?
Social justice in a bourgeois society expects that the basic economic needs of
human beings are met, and that society is free of poverty and violence, of
xenophobia and racism, of sexism and homophobia, of social inequalities that
private and/or public institutions promote.

2.Downward
socioeconomic mobilization

It is no secret that downward socioeconomic mobility is a reality in
American society in the last four decades. This is largely because of the
Reagan neoliberal commitment to transfer massive wealth from the lower classes
to the elites, and to transfer public resources from social welfare to
corporate welfare. Social programs, education and health care, social security,
affordable housing, minimum wage and a massive gap between the highest paid
corporate executives and the average worker are some of the reasons for the
downward mobility in America. Some politicians on both political parties agree
there is a problem with the declining middle class but not a single one, except
Bernie Sanders, blames the capitalist system for it. Instead, the fault rests
with government, as though this is an entity that comes to Washington from Mars
rather than the lobbyist peddling influence.

3.Human Rights, Civil
Rights and Police State Methods

Rights of political prisoners, civil rights of minorities, crime and
justice are inter-related issues and have to do with the correlation between
the institutionalization of the “war on terror” that has had an impact on the
decline of respect for human rights, civil rights and criminalizing minorities
and the poor. Police harassing, arresting, and killings black and Latino youth
in cold blood is not an isolated event, but a pattern of behavior across the
country. The statistics on the US prison population speaks very clearly about
the racist criminal justice system that exists, even under a black president. The
US refusal to respect UN human right charter also speaks volumes of the
arrogance and duplicity of US policy, because the same government in Washington
demands compliance with UN human rights by other countries, including Cuba and
Iran. It is amazing that the US media has no sense of self-reflection when it
demands that all other countries respect human rights, civil rights, women’s
rights, and refrain from police state methods, but the US is guilty of the very
things it accuses its adversaries. This is the ultimate absurdity of “American
Exceptionalism”.

4.Restructuring of
the political system.

The existing political system is heavily dependent on financial
contributions and lobbyists exerting policy influence. Despite many
organizations trying to express their voice, everything from gay rights groups
to environmental and labor unions ones, the voice that matters at the local,
state and federal levels is that of large businesses. For example, if there is
a choice for a city to invest in a new stadium for a football team versus
public education, the money will go to subsidize the very wealthy owner of the
football team at the expense of public education. Both the football franchise
and education have their voices heard in government, but only that of the
millionaire football owner matters. This is only a small sample of how
government pours resources into the private sector at the expense of the public
and calls it democracy.

Ending corporate control of the political process – campaign finance and
government reform so that politicians are not accountable to the corporate
sector but to the general public would go a long way in building democracy in
America. All political candidates agree that the influence of money in politics
is corrupting the system, but they have done nothing about it for decades.
Beyond eliminating the direct role of private campaign money, the political
system itself must be geared to serving ALL people and not merely the
capitalist class as it has been and have the media call this democracy.

5.Foreign Policy and
Defense

Foreign policy based on defense of the nation’s the territorial integrity
ought to be the criteria and not “imperial” policies intended to expand US
corporate interests throughout the world by any means necessary from direct
military intervention to covert operations. The defense budget is the largest
in the world for a country that clearly has very serious public debt problems
eating away at the middle class socioeconomic fabric. The massive spending on
defense intended to maintain the defense industries healthy and provide the
illusion of security as well as leverage for the US to secure market share is
unsustainable.

The reality of China as the world’ preeminent economic power in the 21st
century is one the US helped create because it spent itself to second place
during the Cold War and the manufactured “war on terror”. These are
anachronistic policies, of the mid-20th century and have no place in
our time. The behavior of the US in foreign affairs is very much reminiscent of
the British Empire in its decline when it tried just about everything
militarily, but still continued to decline. In the absence of crafting a new
alliance system that rethinks the value of OAS, SEATO and NATO, the US will
eventually spend itself to oblivion no differently than Great Britain.

Conclusions

The success of the major political parties in the US as well as in most
countries around the world is indeed the co-optation strategy that manages to pay
lip service to the middle class and workers but subordinates their interests to
capital. Democracy allows for open
access into the system that projects the image of theoretical equal
participation by all citizens and political movements when in reality
participation is limited to representatives of capital. Given this reality, a
multi-party system or a two-party system amounts to the same thing because
ultimately the government will represent capital. If a government emerges in a
country where it tries to compromise the interests of capital, the rest of the
world, governments and international financial institutions, make it so
difficult for such a government to succeed that it capitulates.

New political parties arise out of a need on the part of a segment in
society that feels the existing political parties are not representative of all
people. Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Founding Fathers viewed
political parties as factions unrepresentative of the general welfare. The
reality of class politics meant that political parties were a necessary
mechanism around which competing elites of the early American republic revolved
to express their interests. Interestingly enough, throughout the republic’s
two-hundred year history, many Americans unlike their European counterparts, do not
have a strong party affiliation. Even today, between 40 and 50 percent of the
citizens polled declare independent of party affiliation. This is in itself
inactive that neither party particularly expresses their interests and
aspirations, although most people vote their aspirations rather than actual
interests.

The third party in the US can either come from the conservative camp or
from the left-of-center camp and it is highly unlikely to attract much popular
support because the media inculcate into the public the idea that “consensus”
politics is and must remain at the heart of American society. In other words,
the implication is that a Socialist candidate whose platform could represent
the majority of the population is not consensus because such a candidate would
not incorporate the interests of the wealthiest Americans.

We have evidence from history that small third parties act as spoilers for
one or the other major parties, but they hardly make a dent in the political
process or in society. In a country as large as the US, it takes an incredible
amount of money under the existing system to finance a political campaign and
run against the major parties that enjoy the backing not just of the media, but
of the entire institutional structure. The two political parties have been
operating on the assumption that the voters have two choices and of course both
work within an existing political, economic and social structure intended to
preserve the status quo, rather than change it. The entrenched two-party
political system also serves capital that is behind the two political parties.

No matter how much these two try to differentiate themselves, their
differences are mostly on social and cultural issues, rather than systemic
economic and political ones. For example, even the platform of Democrat Bernie
Sanders, a person the media sees as a Socialist, is actually about the same as
that of the Republican Party in 1956 when Eisenhower was the incumbent
president. This is proof of how far to
the right the left Democrats have moved and how far to the extreme right the
Republicans have moved.

Regardless of whether a third and a
fourth party emerge in the US, the system will remain the same until such time
as a major economic crisis results in a social crisis and the political system
begins to crack while a new one emerges, presumably a system that better serves the
majority and not just the top one-third of the population with one-percent
owning most of the wealth and determining policy for the rest of the 99 percent
because they are able to finance political campaigns.

A political party that is organized “top-down”, instead of emerging from the
grassroots is obviously a reflection of the elites that created it to preserve
and expand their interests. When a grassroots movement tries to organize
because it feels marginalized in society, the result is that the mainstream
quickly co-opts it and de-radicalizes its followers. This happened in the
depression of the 1890s, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The dominant political parties have the party machine tools at the local,
state and national levels to bring any dissident movement into the mainstream.
Otherwise, with the help of the media, they destroy it. Therefore, I do not see
a viable third-party movement or movements until the next deep recession in
America later this century, perhaps in the 2030s or 2040s. Because deep
recessions or depressions cause economic polarization, the inevitable result
will be social and political polarization, the ingredients which we see present
in American society today that is much more polarized just beneath the surface
than the “consensus-oriented” political, economic and media elites would have
the public believe.

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